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How long have you had them John (and not treated?) - thanks.

Has anyone in the UK had experience of “VSH” queens, ie; not treated them? And, has anyone sourced VSH stock from the UK? Not from imports? Thank you

They sound fun. Are they unmanaged in the shed?

The queen frame trapping for varroa was learned from Dr Ralph Buchler. It is incredibly efficient at removing mites from the colony when carried out in July - August so that you have a low level of mites on your the winter bees. No chemicals treatment required and flexibility on when to take...

Hopefully there will be lots to learn from observing bees in the wild.

No Robin, it doesn't seem to be the case where there has been long standing resistance eg; Snowdonia in the UK (14 years) and or Cuba (20 years+) . And also true with its relationship with the original host Apis cerane in Asia. Can't always kill the host........ Understanding the mechanisms...

All good points. We work as a club. Initially across 7 apiaries from interested beekeepers. Over 5 years, that has grown to c30 apiaries involved and a 100 colonies going into this winter. There are other neighboring clubs getting going where we can share our learnings and lessons which is...

No opinion poll -sorry. I help run a beekeeping club and we teach how to look for varroa resistant traits in colonies, but also how and when to apply chemical miticide treatments (for exam training purposes). Given a choice, there's not much demand for the latter. We also present to other...

Beekeepers are afraid of natural selection. Perhaps due to a combination of a loss of control, 30 years of education about treatments (or your bees die) or fear of commercial loss. All understandable. But it does stop beekeepers learning from long standing survivor stock that is either...

Hi Garry Do you get the impression that some have been there a good while? They interest us. The propolis envelope that Tom Seeley found around the brood area of natural nests in tree cavities is there for a reason. Marla Spivak showed that propolis reduces the bees’ immune activity and...

We have shared some of our findings on our website. (Natural Beekeeping – Westerham Beekeepers). We are a normal beekeeping club in the south east of England (west Kent/ east Surrey area). There are a few other clubs who are kicking off their own projects. The BBKA have published Prof Stephen...

There are many examples of long standing varroa resistant Apis mellifera honeybees which have been under scientific observation around Europe and North America, as I'm sure you are aware. I'll post this summary research for other readers. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01532364/document...

Capping time of worker brood is interesting and we’ll take a look at that next season. Thanks for posting the research note. Another example of the speed of resistance is in north west Wales - c8 years after varroa arrived. But this is with natural selection where the unfit bees fail - not...

In South Africa, varroa resistance took to 3-5 years for Apis mellifera capensis and 6-7 years for Apis mellifera scutellata, the latter having a similar post capping period to the european honeybee. Key trait is the bees uncapping/recapping worker brood where there are mites to interupt their...

We have DWV type B predominantly in the UK. Type A used to be prevalent, according to research from Prof Stephen Martin's team. Are you inferring that type B is less pathogenic?